Nautilus
Nature Medicine on access to and integrity of data
Everybody agrees that ensuring the integrity and accessibility of research data is crucial for scientific progress. Agreeing on the best way to do so is the hard part, says Nature Medicine in its February Editorial ( 16, 131; 2010). Technological advances have enabled researchers to tackle questions that involve generating vast amounts of data, posing challenges concerning data analysis, manipulation, annotation, sharing and storage that researchers, institutions, funders and journals have not yet fully grasped. How should data be annotated before being stored in a database so that it can be as useful as possible to other researchers? Should data-sharing